Because I Could Not Stop for Death
by descoperitor
Summary: When Harry comes across the grandson of Draco Malfoy when helping a crime boss fix up the people he breaks, Harry is sent to recollect his past and tells it to this unlikely listener. He thinks about what happened to turn him into what he has become. EWE, AU, Muggle!TomRiddle Everything in the books happened except w/out Tom. Different DL. Please read Note. Oneshot.


A/N: So, this little plot bunny absolutely _refused_ to leave me alone until I wrote it. This is just a one-shot.

 **Summary:** When Harry comes across the grandson of Draco Malfoy when helping a crime boss fix up the people he breaks, Harry is sent to recollect his past and tells it to this unlikely listener. He thinks about what happened to turn him into what he has become. EWE, AU, Muggle!TomRiddle Everything in the books happened except w/out Tom. Different DL. Please read **Note**.

 **Warnings:** EWE, AU, tear-jerking moments (I hope, because that is what I tried for), death, mentions of torture nothing explicit, sadness, (somewhat) happy ending (?)

 **Note:** In order to make the story fit, I've had to play with _**lots**_ of dates, most majorly Tom Riddle's birthday. He was not born in 1941, but instead, 2006. Also, a lot of the Death Eaters were born in the 2020s. And, all DE's are muggles except for the LeStrange brothers (who are twins in this story). For the sake of this story and my lack of want for a headache, we're going to say that 2061 is exactly like 2015. No advancement. Sorry. Everything happened in the book **except for the epilogue and Harry's destruction of the Hallows**. There was a different Dark Lord, mentioned later, who did all the same as Voldemort in the books. Irony of all ironies, in this story, Tom Riddle Jr. (aka Voldemort) is a Muggle. Also, please read notes at the end for more info about things from the plot and citations.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter nor do I make any money from the writing of this fic. No copyright infringement is intended.

.:oOo:.

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labour, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,

Their lessons scarcely done;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.

\- Emily Dickinson

.:oOo:.

 **Because I Could Not Stop for Death**

.:oOo:.

As Caelum awoke, he noticed that his hands were bound to a cold metal chair. He attempted to kick out. As were his ankles, it would seem. He felt sharp pains in his neck and on his chest.

Looking around the room, he noticed only two other people. They were identical, and were suspiciously familiar. He also noticed that the room was made of concrete, except for one small, barred window near the top of one of the walls, which provided light to the room.

Caelum's head snapped to the door when he heard a lock click open. He watched a man walk in, head bent to a folder in his hands, wearing a lab coat that fit him...deliciously, yet still managed to flare out like Severus's when he walked away. He had circular, wire-rimmed glasses that just barely hung to the tip for his nose, and long hair that went somewhere down his back.

As he crossed the room, he dragged a swivel chair with him, which he set in front of Caelum and sat down in.

"Do you know what day it is?" he asked finally, looking up into Caelum's face. Caelum recognized those eyes.

"Potter?" he asked incredulously.

The man glanced sharply up at him, having looked back down to the folder, and his eyes flashed with some unknown emotion. "Answer the question."

"Sunday, 13 December. Where-"

"Year?" Potter asked.

"2061. What am I doing here?"

"You suffered a nasty concussion and some...lacerations at the hands of these gentlemen," Potter replied, pointing at the twins standing behind Caelum. Potter took Caelum's head in his hands, and proceeded to lift it to look at his neck. "Hmm…" he said, "this one'll need stitches. And so will this one on your chest. You two, bandage the other cuts while I go get the needle and thread." Saying this, Potter left the room.

The pair of men, disregarding Caelum's pain, began to bandage his many wounds, leaving only the two needing stitches open.

Eventually, Potter came back into the room, holding a metallic tray. On it lay three needles and a spool of black thread, each wrapped in sealed plastic.

"Flask," Potter demanded, holding his hand out to the twin on Caelum's left. The man reached inside of his coat and pulled out a flask, presumably filled with some type of alcohol.

Potter opened it and poured some on his neck. Caelum felt the sting of alcohol on an open wound. He then poured some on the needle, threaded it, and began to stitch the wound on Caelum's neck.

"Move your head a bit." When Caelum failed to move it for Potter's stitches, the man to his right grabbed his head and turned it forcefully, aggravating the injury and pulling a few of the stitches.

"Rodolphus!" Ahhh, _that's_ why they were familiar to Caelum. "You will _not_ manhandle my patients," Potter said in a threateningly low voice. Out of the corner of his eye, Caelum saw Rodolphus flinch.

Caelum felt Potter's breath down his chest, and felt quite uncomfortable with the man's proximity. Deciding that he needed a distraction, he began a conversation. "So, Potter, what got you into Healing?"

.:oOo:.

Harry was having a bad day. No, scratch that, he was having a _shit_ day. The morning had seemed okay. He had woken up leisurely. He had had breakfast, done some reading from his favorite medical journal, gone into work to check on some of his patients. He then continued his rounds and visited with some of his friends at the hospital.

" _Dr. Aric! How've you been? I haven't seen you for weeks, young man! You should know by now to call when you're not going to be making a nuisance of yourself."_

 _Harry turned and saw Caryl standing in the hall behind him, beckoning him over with a patient's chart. She was a tall and somewhat portly woman who appeared to be in her sixties. She had a firm face and a seemingly permanent scowl, with salt-and-pepper hair tied into a firm bun. Despite her outwardly cold appearance, she had kind, blue eyes, and anyone who knew her could tell you that her character was better than most. She reminded Harry of a cross between Professor McGonagall and Molly, despite how much it hurt to think of them._

" _Nurse Bryna. To what do I owe the pleasure?"_

" _Your absence, young man. I demand you tell me where you were, and why you were not here!"_

 _According to hospital records, Harry had taken two of his many-accrued vacation weeks and gone on a sabbatical to relieve some of the stresses of working at a hospital. And that is exactly what he told her._

 _Harry, however, could tell that she didn't believe him, but did not push the matter further, for which he would be eternally grateful. It was then that Harry's phone chose to ring. Looking at the caller ID, Harry said, "Excuse me, Caryl. I need to take this."_

That was when Harry's day had turned to shit. It was Tom calling, saying that his services were yet again required.

" _Ethan, I need you to come to the warehouse. The twins got a little...carried away while trying to get information out of an...associate."_

" _I just spent two weeks in surgery and taking care of men that you put out of commission! I have patients here too, Tom. I can't just drop everything and rush off to aid you whenever it pleases you."_

" _He has a neck wound. It is bleeding quite profusely, from what I hear."_

 _Harry hung up the phone and ran to his office for his bag, then got in his car._

Harry had arrived at Tom's warehouse not ten minutes later, and been handed a folder with all of the man's pertinent medical information in it. Grabbing the swivel chair by the door, Harry unlocked it and entered to room.

.:oOo:.

"So, Potter, what got you into Healing?"

Harry had been asked similar questions many times, mostly by patients. He always gave the same answer. That he had watched old shows in his youth, like _House, M.D._ and _Grey's Anatomy_ , and had become fascinated with the human body. He always told people that a personal hero of his, though entirely fictitious, was Dr. Mallard from _NCIS_. Not that any of that was true.

Harry made a habit of telling that story because the only people he told it to were Muggles. But, given that his present company was magical, and that he could easily disable whatever bugs Tom had placed in this room, he decided to tell the truth, if only to allow himself a respite, however brief, from his false past.

.:oOo:.

 _Harry and Ron had been called out on an urgent assignment in the middle of Greater Hangleton. They had been told that a Death Eater was on the loose, having escaped Auror custody merely hours before, and was rampaging through the Muggle town doing as much damage as he could._

 _So, despite Harry's reservations against going so close to the town where Bogen had grown up into what he had become, they went, Apparating out of the Ministry as soon as they crossed into the Apparition zone._

 _Harry and Ron landed in a non-descript alley off a small road. As they made their way to where the escapee was supposed to be, Ron said, "The Wireless didn't say it was to be overcast today."_

 _Harry looked up and saw what Ron meant. Great grey clouds hung over the town, smothering any stray sunlight that attempted to get through. Harry got a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Allowing his eyes to roam the sky, he caught the dark green Dark Mark shining in the sky, illuminated by an unearthly red glow from below._

" _Those aren't clouds, Ron," Harry said hurriedly, before rushing off in the direction of the source of the glow._

 _As soon as they reached the place where the Death Eater was wreaking havoc, they saw the utter devastation that one wizard could unleash upon defenseless others. The buildings had caught fire, so bright and hot that it was hard to keep one's eyes open. Ash was raining down upon them like some alien snow in the dead of summer._

 _Beyond the flames and toppled monuments, bodies were strewn all about the street, all dead or dying. Mother's bodies wrapped around their children, the weight of their dead flesh suffocating their offspring. Parents desperately clutching at their children's lifeless bodies, eyes filled with resignation as to what lay in their future. Harry passed a family lying on the ground, two parents and three children, all seemingly unhurt, if it weren't for the ash filling their mouths and noses._

 _Worst of all, Harry watched, forced into stillness by the shock of it, a father pick up a shard of glass and cut his neck, his dying body falling to land over his wife's and daughter's bodies._

 _Noticing his shadow's movement, Harry and Ron managed to locate the Death Eater. Later, they would find out that he was yet another nameless, faceless puppet in Chernobog's army of sadists, set out under the banner of Pureblood supremacy to inflict torture and pain on this world and its inhabitants._

 _As they ran to apprehend him, Harry passed two Muggles on the ground, trying to cuddle together in spite of their injuries. He saw that the mother was close to death, and she was attempting to hold her son's wound closed, in hopes that he wouldn't bleed out. Her fingers were slipping as she attempted to stifle the flow, her own life force leaving her. She looked up at Harry, her blue eyes locking onto his green. "Save him."_

 _Harry watched as her eyes slid shut for the last time, only then being spurred into action. He ran to them, picked the boy up, and Apparated as quick as he could to St. Mungo's._

" _HELP! The boy, he's bleeding out. HELP ME!" Harry shouted as loud as he could, over and over, until a Healer came to them._

" _He is a Muggle," she said. "We cannot treat him." Looking at Harry with pity, she stood and left._

 _Too shocked to do anything else, he took the boy's body in his arms, and Apparated to the only place he could think of._

 _Walking into London General's ER, holding a dying boy in his arms and covered in blood and ash, obviously drew the attention of the Muggles, and the boy was seen to immediately._

" _I'm sorry," the doctor said as he came out from behind the white sheet covering the boys 'room'. "There was nothing we could do for your son. He bled out before we could close the wound."_

 _The doctor left, not even hearing Harry's soft, "He's not even my son."_

 _Harry's morbid curiosity took him behind the sheet, to look at the boy's body. Removing the sheet from the boy's face, he looked down at the body._

 _A boy, not even ten, taken from this world because of something he knew naught about. Taken from this world by an unlucky injury._

 _Taken by a small wound to his neck._

.:oOo:.

 _Allowing the Muggles to believe that he was the boy's father, Harry took the boy's body with him to Godric's Hollow. He buried the boy in a small ceremony, with only himself, the priest, and the spirits of those gone, next to Harry's parents. Looking at the tombstone, Harry read._

 _ **Somebody's sorrow is making me weep:**_

 _ **I know not her name, but I echo her cry,**_

 _ **For the dearly bought baby she longed so to keep,**_

 _ **The baby that rode to its long-lasting sleep**_

 _ **In the little white hearse that went rumbling by.**_

 _And Harry wept._

.:oOo:.

Caelum noticed the tears that Potter seemed not to notice by the end of his story. Caelum regretted asking. He assumed that, since Potter obviously worked with Muggles, that he'd been told the lie he told them, when they inevitable asked, instead of the horrifying truth.

Caelum also noticed that Potter had seemingly not reacted to the sight of his torture. If the stories from his grandfather were true, then Potter should've been up in arms about it. He was not supposed to seem as though this was something he saw on a regular basis, and, even worse, _put up with_.

"I guess Grandfather's stories were embellished after all," Caelum said.

Raising an inquisitive eyebrow, Potter asked, "How so?" without looking up from his work.

"He always said that you were the one person who, no matter what, would never put up with injustice or pain inflicted on anyone, no matter who they were."

Harry's face remained impassive, but he opened his mouth again.

.:oOo:.

 _Harry took the knife to his wrists, and sliced as deep as he could. He sat in his bathtub, having taken a Blood Thinning potion, and waiting for the soft embrace of the darkness of eternity to take him over. He closed his eyes and relished in the pain of his life leaving._

 _Harry opened his eyes as a strange feeling overtook him, and his wrists healed themselves. Jumping up, Harry ran to the toilet, barely managing to open it before he threw up the contents of his stomach, including the potion._

 _Determined to finish the deed, Harry picked up his wand and cast_ Sectumsempra _on his wrists, and watched as the crimson life flowed out of him. And then, the skin of his wrists knotted itself back together._

 _Desperate, Harry turned his wand on himself, and cast_ Avada Kedavra _. As it refused to work, he tried and tried and tried until he finally noticed that it was not his own wand he was using. It was the Elder Wand. Sat nearby on the sink's counter were the Cloak and the Stone._

 _Harry gave a frustrated shout, and destroyed his flat. Then, he did it again. And again. And again._

.:oOo:.

 _Finally, deciding that his quest to come under the dominion of that which served him was futile, Harry began to think about what he had seen in his time. And how much more he would see if he was forced to see. He thought. And thought. And thought._

.:oOo:.

"Sitting there on my destroyed couch, after so many botched suicide attempts, I decided that, if I was going to be stuck here forever, I would try to make the world more tolerable. And I decided that whatever rudimentary punishments were inflicted upon bad people by the government was not enough. So, I decided that I would not actively work to stop bad people from suffering, since I could not stomach inflicting pain myself," Harry finished.

"But why decide to leave the Magical world? The _Prophet_ never reported anything about you being forced out."

.:oOo:.

 _Harry decided it was time to leave. He could no longer put up with everything he saw, from the Ministry's corruption to the criminals' atrocious acts of terror. He decided to leave his job, the Ministry, his home, the whole Wizarding World._

 _He decided that he would become a doctor. That he would do his best to save all the little boys of the world, and the little girls, too, and everyone else. He_ would _make a difference, if not for the magical world that he had come close to loathing._

.:oOo:.

"I would appreciate it if you would tone down your empathic abilities, Caelum."

Caelum blushed and would've ducked his head, if his father's lessons hadn't broken him of that habit. "I'm afraid that I don't have much control over it, Mr. Potter. I'm nearly a Squib, and the only manifestation of my nearly nonexistent magical core is that I'm an empath. I don't really have much control over it. You're the first to notice its effects, however."

Potter had finished working on his neck, and what now nearly finished with the last wound that needed stitching. "Would you like me to Firecall your father when I finish?" he asked. Caelum could tell he was looking for something beyond a yes or no in his answer.

"No, thank you, Mr. Potter." Caelum noticed Potter's lips turn down into a frown, and his brow creased.

"Don't you think he'd care to know what happened?"

"If you could call Grandfather, I would appreciate it. He'd probably care more than Father."

Potter nodded, and changed the topic, thankfully. "What's got you on Riddle's bad side?"

.:oOo:.

 _Caelum had just left the bank. He was on his way home to visit his cat, Leo, when he heard a shout from the alleyway next to his flat. Deciding that it couldn't hurt to sate his curiosity, Caelum looked around the corner._

 _He saw a man with greying chestnut hair, and eerie red eyes, obviously from contact lenses. He saw the gun. He heard the shot. He saw the woman slump to the ground._

 _The man saw him, and sent two of the thugs surrounding him towards Caelum. Caelum ran, but could not escape the men. They jabbed a needle in his neck, and he slowly fell into unconsciousness…_

.:oOo:.

 _...and awoke tied to a chair in a dim room. In front of him stood the two men who had drugged him, obviously twins, and magical. Caelum's empathic abilities told him that these two men were intent on harming him, and their physical size and his restraints told him that there was nothing he could do._

" _Mr. Riddle," one of them said, "would like us to make sure that you will not be telling anybody what happened. He has asked us to give you a...taste, of the repercussions of such actions against his person." By this point, both twins were smiling creepily, showing off their gleaming white teeth._

.:oOo:.

"You did nothing?" Potter asked sharply, now looking into Caelum's face. Caelum nodded.

Potter looked up at the twins, fury in his eyes, and they flinched. "I will be having words with you two after I have them with Tom."

.:oOo:.

Having chewed out Tom successfully, and managing to scare the crime boss shitless, whether or not he would admit it, Harry went to his flat and sat on the rug in front of his fireplace.

Pulling out the small box he kept hidden under a floorboard in case of emergencies, Harry threw some Floo powder from it into the fire, called out "Malfoy Manor, Lord's Study," and stuck his head in the flame.

Harry saw that Draco was sitting at his desk, and his head shot upward abruptly as he heard the flame crackle to life. Harry saw Draco, and regretted not staying in contact with him. Despite all Draco's efforts, his hair was now going grey, and his soldiers began to sag with age. He looked on the cusp of old and frail, and Harry wished that seeing him like this need not have been such a shock.

"It's about damn time Potter," he called out. "Come through."

Against his better judgement, Harry found himself hurdling the rest of his body through the flame, and tripping out of Draco's Floo grate, landing on his face. By the time he had picked himself up, Draco was sat in an armchair holding a brandy, with one on the table next to the other armchair, presumably for Harry.

"It's nice to finally be able to use that glass again, Harry." Harry instantly felt guilty. He had never told Draco about his decision to leave, he had just done it. And, by the looks of it, he was missed by at least one person.

"Something has happened to Caelum." Draco's back shot instantly ramrod straight, and his eyes locked onto Harry's. "He was taken by a Muggle crime boss, Tom Riddle, after witnessing a murder. He was tortured to make sure he wouldn't talk to the police. Luckily, Tom uses me as a doctor to fix up his victims. He called me in when the twins were finished with Caelum, and I set to work on him. He'll be OK."

Draco's soldiers sagged with relief, but tightened at Harry's question. "How come he thinks it would be useless for me to call his father?"

"Because it would be," was the reply. Seeing that Harry would ask for a better answer, Draco elaborated. "After Scorpius was born, Astoria and I divorced because the terms of our marriage contract were met, and we never particularly liked each other. She left me with Scorpius and ran off to France. After a few years, I had what you might call...an early midlife crisis, wondering what I would do with myself. I had no significant other, I was bored, and I had no way of supporting my son should anything happen to the family fortune. I left on a sabbatical. I had only planned on being away a couple weeks, but weeks turned into months, and months into years. By the time I came back, I had found someone for myself, but at the cost of my son's beliefs. When I left, I left Scorpius in the care of my parents. They took care of him during those years, but also did detrimental things to his character. Lucius managed to poison Scorpius's mind with his Pureblood-supremacist bullshit, and Scorpius was never the same. When I came back to England with a boyfriend, a half-blood, Scorpius would not stop saying nasty, horrible things to him and me about his bloodline, but also the fact that I was gay.

"When Scorpius finally grew up and got married, he married a Nott (who, I'm sure you remember, are staunch supporters of Pureblood ideals) and they had a son. Caelum. But, Caelum got the empath gene from his mother, which took up all the magic his core could provide, leaving him a Squib except for his one talent. Naturally, Lucius used his dying breath to convince Scorpius to keep his son hidden from 'respectable society' and throw him out into the Muggle world and disown him once he was 17. Being the little bastard he was, Scorpius did as he was told, despite my protests. There was nothing I could do, not when the Nott family intervened because they didn't want the shame of the public knowing that Notts bred Squibs."

Draco hung his head, looking dejected and sorrowful. "I did everything I could for him, provided him everything. I even left half of the Malfoy estate to him in my will, though the lordship will still go to Scorpius."

"I'll take care of him, Draco. Don't worry."

.:oOo:.

And so, Harry began to keep an eye on Caelum. He watched as the boy he had known grew into a man. He helped the boy through the death of his grandfather, even as he consoled himself over the loss of his best friend.

He watched as Caelum cursed his father, and used his abilities to make Scorpius's life hell. He watched as Caelum had a family, and his children had a family, remaining in the shadows, keeping Caelum company as his wife died. He kept Caelum comapy until he passed.

He asked Caelum's son to bury Caelum in Godric's Hollow, next to the boy. He set up a Malloy family mausoleum there for Caelum's family.

One day, Harry came across a little girl named Emma Dursley, whose family hated her for her "freakishness." He helped her, too.

And Harry no longer attempted to stop for Death, for he knew now that he _could not_.

~fin~

*the inscription on the boy's tombstone is from _The Little White Hearse_ by Emma Wheeler Wilcox. See the full poem through the link on my profile.

**about Draco's comment about using the glass again when he sees Harry, I didn't want to state it explicitly earlier, but for those who still are in the dark (don't feel bad, I was very ambiguous): the story is that while Harry was an Auror, he and Draco made up, and became friends. Every so often, Harry would come through Draco's Floo after work or a hard, depressing case, and they would talk, each with a glass of brandy, sitting in those armchairs facing the fire. As Harry's visits became more frequent, Draco would leave the glass out all the time, so that he was always ready for Harry's visit. When Harry decided to leave, Draco didn't know, so he kept the glass out in the hopes that Harry would return soon for another brandy and a talk.

***so, Voldy's replacement in this fic was the DL Chernobog (named for Slavic deity) whose original name was Roch Bogen (anagram)

A/N: Well, that was hard to write. I hope that you've enjoyed it. R&R please!

Hopefully I'll update my stories soon, but IDK.

REVIEW PLEASE! THANKS!


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